Scar Tissue
by I'm Judging You
Summary: According to my legal papers, I am a grade A schizophrenic psychopathic pyromaniac that should be admitted to a mental hospital, but I didn't end up that way over night. It took years of slowly dissolving to land myself as many mental disorders as I have. Pyro Origins Story.
1. Chapter 1

**_Scar tissue-_**

**This is my first team fortress fan fic, and so I am excited.****_ Only going to say this once; don't own Team Fortress 2._**

**This is a Pyro origin story. Pyro is a female, but if you don't like that, you could easily see it as male. Gender is rarely referenced. **

**Keep in mind this is in a 50s-60s period in a trashy outside New York area. **

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**~If you're going to play with fire, you're going to get burned.**

As a kid, I dreamed I was a dragon. A mighty beast that breathed fire and with every step it took, the earth shook as though it was an earthquake. I dreamed I was a as tall as a skyscraper, towering above all and everyone that ever hurt me, everyone that ever doubted me.

Anyone that would try to get in my way I could send away aflame, and every roadblock in my path I could simply step over or obliterate. I took bites out of the clouds and spat them out hurricanes. I was a ferocious monster and I loved it.

The way I saw it at first, I didn't play with fire, it played with me. It chose _me_ to be the beast and I had no objections.

I created fire storms. I made hell. I set fire to the very earth I walked on. The dream always ended with myself drowning in my own inferno, every time it simply ate me up as if I were paper and turned me to nothing but ashes and bones. The fire reduced to embers and smoke till it smoldered out and the people cheered over what was left of my charred body.

It was never a happy dream, but I liked it anyway.

And then I'd wake up.

**_~Fire is the most tolerable third party._**

_~Henry David Thoreau._

At every age I had a fascination with it, a beautiful flame that dies just as quickly as it destroys, and by eleven I already carried no less than four lighters in my pocket. My favorite joke was when someone would ask me if I had a light.

I'd just give them a quizzical look and present one of my zippos from the depths of my pockets, each one with a different engraving and a different model. They never noticed the details though, nor do they take the time to admire the flame.

Pfft, amateurs, the lot of them.

Lighters weren't the only thing I had. In my dresser drawer I hid my matches and in the back yard I built my fire pit. Every time I used either I got sideways looks, but I usually got those anyway and could almost always brush them off, others not so much but that hardly matters now.

I burned all sorts of stuff in my fire pit. Big things, little things, even dead things. Every summer night I piled it high with trash and doused with with lighter fluid and watched it burn for hours. I watched the way the orange danced. I imagined the kids' at school in the fire, and if I listened hard enough, through the crackles I would swear I could hear them taking back every word of insult they throw at me and replacing them with apologies.

No more chink. No more freak. No more witch.

At this point I realized I was guilty of playing with fire.

On the nights I couldn't use my fire pit I would usually fair fine. I could live without it. But then there were the nights that I absolutely needed to burn something and couldn't. That ate me up. When flicking my wrist around the lighter and burning all the matches in the house weren't enough to forget my problems and fears is when I thought truly _violent_ thoughts.

Thoughts like what to do to that stupid fourteen year old boy who thought comparing me to squinty eyed pigs was funny. Thoughts like what to do with the twelve year old girl who gave me funny looks for not being like her. Thoughts like what to do with the old man in the candy shop who wouldn't sell to me because he thought I was some kid of a Japanese spy.

I had nights like that a lot more than most knew. Nights like that, that's when I'd dream of dragons.

After expressing this to my parents, they took me to see some kind of doctor. He smiles are as fake as his wig and his questions seemed off topic and accusing.

When seeing this doctor is when I was first presented with the term 'pyromaniac.' Had a nice ring to it.

_**~You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.**_

_~Edwin Louis Cole_

At age thirteen I had been in more fist fights then churches. I didn't look for them, but I certainly didn't avoid them. As long as the other kid through the first punch it wasn't like I jumped them, as many assumed. I was told it was unladylike a thousand times, I was told it was improper a thousand more times, but only the first few times when my mother told me did I really give a damn.

Eventually it just grew old and I blocked out her voice.

I was fumbling with my lighter when they came to me. I had a cigarette in-between my lips (yes I smoked) and a couple of of gum packets in my hands, I'm going to assume that's what they wanted, or maybe I simply pissed them off. There was six of them in total, all older and taller, which is no surprise cause I was never very tall.

I offered them either a piece of gum or a cig because even thirteen year old me knew that handling the six of them alone wasn't something I could do.

The bastards jumped me. One held each arm and another socked me in the gut a few times. I must've picked a fight with at least a couple of them before hand because they had some anger to unleash on me. I absorbed blow after blow but I knew they were holding back. Every fourteen year old boy could hit harder than that.

When I was able to pry an arm free and swing my fist one of their heads is when they got mad. I hit a familiar red head square in the jaw and everybody fell silent as he hit the ground clutching his face as if that would keep the blood in his skull. He screamed something horrible, shouting profanities I hadn't had the chance to use yet. He withered in pain in the dirt.

I might've felt genuinely bad. I might've even felt sorry, but I might also have been patting myself on the back for such a good hit, one that would leave purple bruises on my knuckles for weeks. Good bruises.

"You little shit, yo 'little piece of-" The rest of what he said was to mumbled to make sense. He then gurgles over blood and spit in a way that makes me believe he lost a few teeth.

I learned I should've just taken the beating because now they planned to do more than just take my stuff. I struggled to even hold my feet on the ground as two of the stronger ones hauled me off with grips of iron around my arms. The other boy was yet to get up and one kid decided to staying with them.

I would've given anything for another fifty pounds or another six inches, any size would have helped.

"Ya little shit, ya real jacked up Thomas face."

I spat at him. "Fuckers."

Down by the reservoir is where I was thrown down. A black boy took my shoes and another kicked me with his own, the leather making indents in my skin. If I just had the chance to get up, I would've had a chance to defend myself.

They through me in the water.

I got out.

They through me back in.

I got out.

They threw me back in.

And the process repeated for hours till I finally just sank.

I wasn't a mighty dragon. I wasn't a witch as I was accused to be. I wasn't nearly as bulletproof as I had led myself to believe.

They weren't trying to kill me, not really, they just wanted to cause me pain, and so when the hour was long past dinner time and when I finally grew tired of trying to get out and let myself sink to the bottom, they left. I would've done the same, I didn't want to be part of some fucking murder.

The water rushed through my nose and mouth and down my throat, filling me up like a water balloon. Drowning is a far more painful death than most realize, and within seconds I was squirming like a useless rat to reach the surface. My foot was stuck under what felt like a tire.

I tried and tried to pry myself loose and float to the top, but I only exhausted myself further.

...

Then I dreamt of dragons and fire, of burning cities and scaly beasts. I dreamt of being able to play with all the fire I wanted and I dreamt my parents were watching and playing with me.

As if, but a sucker can dream, right?

...

I woke in a hospital bed the next morning. Turns out some Boston kids (visiting New York for what reason?) saw what happened and pulled me out in time. I didn't get a chance to meet them if they were even real, and even if I did I wouldn't have remembered their names, but I was thankful.

I can still feel the water soaking through my skin. The liquid bursting through to my lungs. No matter how dry I was I still felt saturated, and I couldn't shake the feeling because there are no matches available to teenagers in a hospital.

And the food is terrible, if i had a choice, that would be the first to go up in smoke.

I had visitors soon, and they brought no matches. This was one of the few times I didn't have a lighter and so my hands itched for the glossy metal of a zippo. I asked my dad if he had brought one and he looked at me as if I had grown another head.

I shrugged. Pyromaniac problems, I suppose he wouldn't understand. No one does.

My parents told me they were happy I was okay, that they loved me, and for the next week they paid me more attention than they had in years before I shut them out again.

The night I was released I went home and burned as much shit I could get a hold of in my fire pit. I pretended that the searing flames eating away at the trash was actually the charred bodies of those boys, bloody and beaten.

Only I couldn't hear them apologize in the crackling, only screaming. That suited me just fine, but this time I didn't tell my parents about it, any of it. They thought it was weird enough and with any more they might just through me in an insane asylum.

From then on when I dreamed, I had dreams of drowning too.

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**Next chapter should be soon. Please review. I'm sorry if this is slow, but in a Pyro origins story so I need to get the origins down. Have a nice day.**

**Oh, and one question, does the Pyro seem fucked up enough as a kid? Is this over kill, or just fine?**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hi, back with another chapter. Thanks to all those who reviewed/followed. Please note, our female pyro does not resemble the female pyro model on the interwebs. Our pyro does not have those big ass boobs or big ass ass. Just no.**

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**_~When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat._**

_ ~Nelson Mandela_

It took me eight months to get my lighter collection back to it's former glory. On the day I was tossed into the reservoir I lost at least four good zippos, and those are hard to get a hold of when you don't have money.

And trust me when I say I'm genuinely scared of water. Not scared in the way some kids are to clowns, or in the way teenage boys are of teenage girls, no, this was a real fear. A real fear that led me straight back to the first doctor I ever saw, one of many.

And he said: Hydrophobic. He said it as if it was as light as a feather, as if it wasn't a real fear. _Hydrophobic._

Not a name I'd like to add onto the list of my problems, but a necessary one. It was hard to hide when I flinched and shouted every time a water balloon hit, or when I even came close to a river or that god forsaken reservoir. Showering was barely standable, and the option of a bath flew out the window.

It made my parents scared. Scared for me I think, scared I wouldn't live a normal life with the direction I seemingly insisted to follow.

It made me scared too, but no way I would let anyone know it. I tried to embrace all of my 'mental illnesses' when people were looking, good thing often enough they weren't.

I liked it when they weren't looking. It made it easier to get away with stuff, and as a teenager, I pulled all kinds of shit no one saw.

**_~The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money, and for fun._**

_~Jimmy Breslin_

I started using my fire pit less and less as I grew up. My imagination dulled and I couldn't hear the voices through the crackling like I use to. That, and I just found bigger and better things to burn.

At the age of fourteen, I burned my first building. Nothing big, just a cabin-like shed way past the racetrack and out in the field. At one point it held farm equipment and a dire infestation of rats, but within forty minutes it was reduced to a shell of ash and then just smoke.

I wore the best inconspicuous old hoodie I could find, a black one with all sorts of rips and tears, and a pair of ratty jeans and left. I paid careful attention no one saw my face, cause if they did, it'd be over.

I did it with nothing but matches and a little bottle of lighter fluid. I would later find lighter fluid to much of a cheat to use, but at the time I needed the extra help. I got some on my hands.

I lit a match and the shed lit up like a Christmas tree. I'm sure it was visible from the highway, and maybe even from the old racetrack, but no one came immediately.

The shed burned like pine cones, and never before had I enjoyed playing with fire so much.

Like any good sociopath, I stood back to admire my work. And then I deemed it admired enough and proceeded to get the hell out of there when the weeds in the field started to catch too. It spread quicker than I anticipated, and the greens of the field smoked, filling the sky and my lungs. I looked around for that bottle of lighter fluid, covering my mouth and nose from the blinding smog.

I found it with flames already eating at the plastic outside. Even teenage me, who would be sent to the burn clinic three times, could identify that if the flames burned through the plastic, it would be bad.

The whole deal was just an amateur mistake. And I committed another one when I didn't just turn tail and run the fuck out of there. In the spur of the moment I knelt down to try and snatch it before it combust, thinking I could save it.

As soon as I touched it, the container exploded.

You can imagine how my hands felt.

Fire, as much as I love it, as much as I use it and tie myself to it, hurts like a bitch. It ate away at the skin on my hands like it was nothing more than paper, and I screamed.

I held my hands close for a moment, and looked around. The fire was spreading, across the field rapidly, something I would've been proud of if I didn't feel so scared.

The sound of sirens coming down the highway brought me back and I sprinted away, wondering the south end of town till the smoke in the sky went away. I returned home at three in the morning.

I know my parents noticed my burned hands, my frantic behavior and the stench of smoke buried in my clothes. And I'm sure they read the damage reports of arson in the next day's paper and tied two and two together.

And I had never felt so alive, than at that moment when I read the destruction report in the paper.

From that day on, my mother had a hard time looking me in the eye, and she couldn't stand to be in the room as my father patched up my hands.

_**~I can burn down in minutes what takes you years to build.** _

_ ~Unknown_

To say I had a rebellious teenage faze is an understatement. When my father, a hardworking man doing his very best to give my mother and I a good life in America, said I shouldn't go somewhere, I made it a goal to get there just to spite him. I was fifteen, nearly sixteen when I killed my first man.

It's safe to say I wasn't where I should've been. In a part of town my father told me not to go.

And I ran into a stranger on the street. He had greasy hair, hungry eyes, and over sized hands with nails trimmed like a girls.

This ended up being another time when another 50 pounds or six inches would've came in handy. Another time when if I had just a little more size it would've helped me fight. This proved to be another time to show me I couldn't be a dragon.

At least not yet.

I'm going to pretend what really happened to me then didn't really happen, because it doesn't _really_ matter. Long story short, we... ehh, not important. Just note, I locked him in a public bathroom, at some sleazy closed nightclub, drenched the place in gasoline and torched it, while I was leaving.

It burned good, and though by this point I'd set five different fires to buildings and gotten away safely, this time I didn't. I'll admit to being slow as fuck getting out of there, but in my defense I was a bit emotionally distraught.

The floorboards underneath me gave way. I landed on hot burning coals. I screamed at the top of my lungs and cried bloody murder.

This is the first time one of my fires ever really hurt me.

_**~When a man becomes a fireman his greatest act of bravery has been accomplished. What he does after that is all in the line of work.** _

_~Edward F. Croker_

_..._

Only a few minutes later the firemen came. I remember one with a painted mask walking through the hallway next to me, and through the flames I could see him limping, and I only realized he was there when I heard a faint humming.

I yelled. I yelled_ loud._ He came, and even through all the equipment I could tell he was surprised to see me like I was, half dead, suffocating and burned to shit and back.

He took of his mask and held it against my face till I found my hands and did it for myself. He had a lopsided smile, but why he was smiling I don't know. "You are lucky I'm here kid." He mumbled several encouraging things I'll never remember and hoisted me over his shoulder before taking leave.

I would see him again.

...

I dreamed of a dragon dying. I dreamed of a fiery beast taking its final breath and being swallowed by the sea. I dreamed of that god damn greasy man with the big hands and hungry eyes.

I dreamt of him killing the dragon.

I also dreamt of dancing bears and the sky falling in as well as other random shit, but I'll just blame the drugs for those.

When on pain meds while comatose in the burn unit, it's natural to dream of some pretty messed up things, so when I woke up screaming, no one thought it was odd.

It was just a nightmare. Upon waking, I was held down in the hospital bed and explained the situation to. I nearly freaked out at them holding me down, and I screamed as if I needed saving. They held a pillow to my mouth till I calmed down, and told me I burned myself real good. Third degree burns covering 50% of my torso, and various scarring on my arms and legs.

I was fed more pain meds, and my parents were called. They arrived with a couple of police officers.

I was scared they had come to take me away for arson.

At first, I thought about running. But the damage done to my torso would make that impossible. I thought about lying, but I knew they would see right through it if my mom hadn't already told them of my sociopathic behavior.

And dear god, did my fingers itch for my lighter. Or matches. Or someone else's lighter. The stress was unbearable. I didn't want to be arrested.

My mom cried over me and my dad told me the nicest things as the two police officers stood in the corner, waiting for us to finish our family time.

Turns out, they only wanted to know what I was doing in my underwear in a closed nightclub in the middle of the night while it was on fire.

So I swallowed my pride and told them.

I even told them how I locked the man in the bathroom, and how I started the fire on purpose. They called it self defense and shock and let me go charge free.

My mother cried some more.

My father hung his head in shame, but I'm not sure if it was shame in me. He repeatedly cursed that bastard man I met under his breath, but didn't reprimand me for being where I wasn't supposed to be.

And a month later I was released. My family acted like a good functioning family for maybe another month before I messed it up again.

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**Yeah, I know, another just origin chapter. Sorry, we'll get to the team soon, I just have to get a few more events and a character in. Next chapter our pyro meets blu! Or red, haven't decided yet. Either way, have a nice week. I'll try to update soon, but I said that last time and it took me like a month, so I don't really know.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Hi, I'm back. Everyone has brought up the point of a lot of grammatical errors in my work and I am sorry for that. I went back and fixed a few but I'm sure I missed a bunch. My apologies, I hope that doesn't bother you too much. A special thanks to twisterGlitch and SanctusCecidit for your reviews. They made my day, along with everyone else who supported me.**

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**_~The scars of others should teach us caution._**

_~St. Jerome_

The scars peppered my hands with permanent blisters and left a texture like sandpaper, but that was nothing compared to my back, which looked like it was thrown through a blender. A blender on fire. And it never really ever did stop hurting, never completely. Even now I can feel a phantom pain, though it has healed over and over and over.

It was something I could hide with a collared t-shirt though, at least for the most part. My hands still looked a little messy, and tiny burns freckled down my arms, and don't forget the swirl of angry scarring that reached up to my ear. It's not horribly noticeable, but there.

They never bugged me as much as they bugged everybody else.

**_The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts._**

_~Paul R. Ehrlich_

At fifteen I got my first job, just a few months after my accident. I figured that in only a few years I'd be leaving my parents, so I should prepare. I worked at a mechanic shop, as a junior mechanic learning from one of my so called 'supervisors.'

To get the job I cut my hair boy short, called myself Randy, and said I was eighteen. There wasn't anyway I would get the job being a fifteen year old girl, so I figured a little white lie would do no harm.

And it worked. I came home with little more than a buzz cut and told my dad I had a job. He got the situation right away, and instead of yelling at me for lying or being 'unladylike' he said he was proud.

I'm still not sure whether he was lying or not, but I lit up like the fourth of July at the words 'I'm proud of you.' I still feel lighthearted and giddy at the memory.

My mom didn't act half as pleased. She stared at my hair for ten straight minutes before asking if I was a homosexual, when I said no she just shook her head. "Then why are you trying to be a boy?" Her tone wasn't hurtful but it struck deep anyway.

I cringed. I didn't know how to react, or why what I was doing was bad. This didn't hurt anyone. So I told her to fuck off, I was steering my life in the right direction with this job. I was going somewhere. She shut up about it, and stopped caring. Within a week she was helping me wash the grease stains out of my uniform.

I loved that job. Everyday I went through hell and back to please my bosses, I worked with constantly hungover coworkers, and I carried everyone's load, but I was doing something. That's all I needed to do. Something to set my mind to, and thanks to this distraction, I was able to step away from starting fires for a bit. The way my father put it, the dragon was sleeping.

Sure, I still lit a few fires, but mostly old barns. Most of the time I could just go back to my fire pit and burn trash and yard waste. I assumed things were better like that, and they were. For a while, no one got hurt.

The best part about my job was all the spare parts it allowed me to take home. At the end of the day, after junking a car or a motorcycle or something, there would be all sorts of parts no one needed anymore. I'd ask my boss If I could take some for my car at home, and he'd say yes with the kind of tone that showed he really didn't care. After a while he realized I didn't have a car at home, but he still said yes, but now with an amused look.

I started a hobby of tinkering. A lot better than setting fires.

For my sixteenth birthday my, dad built a shed in our backyard and let me build my own little workshop in there. It was the most out of character thing for him to do, but every once and a while he'd pull something like that.

I remember my mom watching from the kitchen window, her face pale as a ghost's, and shaking her head as she observed us hoist a wall up. She was half convinced I would cook meth in there or something on that level, but my dad had a little more faith. I think he allowed it because he knew it deterred me from my fire starting habit.

Mostly.

Between the scraps from work and the crap I pulled out of the junkyard, I was free to create whatever the hell I wanted. Blueprints for all sorts of shit lined the walls like wallpaper and wood shavings carpeted the floor.

It was a place I really called home.

And I made flamethrowers in there. I made other stuff too, but not anything worth mentioning. I didn't show them to my parents of course, a long time ago I'd learned it's best not to show them much of anything.

I'll admit the first flamethrower was little more than a spray paint can (as fuel) on a stick with a lighter in front of the nozzle as a pilot light, (something I have no fucking idea how I didn't kill myself with), but they got better. Most were never made, most of them never made it farther than a obsolete blueprint on the wall. One such blueprint was one with the primary part made of a car muffler. It was too dangerous to make but the idea of it always made me giggle.

And then one day, when I was nearly seventeen years old, I made the best one yet. In lack of a better way to put it, it was my baby. My fifty pound, beautiful flamethrower-baby with more examples of fine craftsmanship than most cars. And thus I needed to test it. I needed to use it.

I swear when I say it wasn't meant to be a weapon. It wasn't suppose to even see any action, but it did. When I designed my flamethrower, it was really just an extension of my hobby, something to do and a nice piece so show off to anyone who came into my shed.

I didn't want to kill anyone with it, but as soon as it was done I needed to use it.

So in the middle of the night I snuck out and headed to the old racetrack. Who would be at a racetrack in the middle of the night? I thought to myself, but I snuck about as if there was someone behind every corner anyway. Parts of the racetrack were still littered in horse shit, making the massive arena look almost trashy.

I licked my lips in anticipation. I could feel my fingers itching and my breath getting ragged. A job and a new hobby could throw me off my habit for a while, but I'll always come back to it.

The racetrack was old, with lots of fine woodwork to make it seem fancy. My father took me down there to see a race one day when I was just a girl. I saw all sorts of different men place ridiculous bets on horses they've never seen before and get mad when the horse loses. One man in particular lost half of his years salary. That was how my father taught me not to gamble, at least not with money.

That lesson stuck, but enough others didn't.

I stared at the track for a full fifteen minutes before I torched it. My new flamethrower worked like a charm, it felt as if it was pure power in my hands. I had to retreat a little bit so I didn't suffocate.

I felt indestructible. I felt bulletproof. I felt like a dragon. I was on a power high miles long.

And _then_ I heard screaming. A continuous screeching coming from the burning structure and rattling in my ears like a bell. Someone was in there. I don't know who, and I don't know why, but someone was in there. I deflated immediately.

And then the screaming died down, but my heart sped up.

I watched from afar as the firemen arrived, (I had a soft spot for firemen ever since that one saved my life) and tried to extinguish the flames. It would take them hours to do so, and by then the fire would have already desolated the area.

_I _had just killed a man, or a woman, or a child. But someone had been in there and I was responsible for their demise. This time it wasn't in self defense, or from shock or was it justified. In a way it was an accident, but the fire had been on purpose. Bitter tears fell down my face. _What the fuck do I do?_

I felt just the same as when I started my first fire, useless, a bit regretful, full of adrenaline and terrified.

I had just taken a human life and my emotions were so out of control, yet somehow I felt _happy. _

I knew how fucked up that was, and I felt bad for feeling happy (if that makes any sense). I wanted to talk about it, or to cry about it to someone because I knew this was far from normal. I shouldn't be happy someone died.

Luckily I wouldn't have to keep the secret for long.

_**~Karma's a bitch.**_

_~unknown._

It only took one day for karma to come back and bite me in the ass. I was coming home from work the next day, the sun was going down, and I was still a nervous wreck from the day before. I was so useless at work I got sent earlier.

"You okay Randy?" My boss asked. Keep in mind my name isn't Randy.

I shrugged. "Just a bit out of it sir."

"You look sick."

I shrugged again. Then he sent me home, he offered me a ride, a ride I clearly should've took, but I denied and said I'd prefer to walk.

It was a bit of a walk home, about two miles. I was walking out of town, on twenty fourth turning on to highway H (a long dirt road) when a gas station on the corner blew up without warning.

It was something right out of the movies.

Flames gushed out at a 30 meter radius, and everything was just a big blur of black and orange I couldn't tell what was fire what was smoke and what was flying debris.

And it hurt so bad. I was tossed like a rag doll and then skitted to a halt on the asphalt.

All I could feel was pain, all I could see was orange and all I could smell was burned flesh.

My last conscious thought, other than that of a wailing pain, was a sarcastic quip. _"Heh, I didn't start the fire this time."_

**_~It is said that time heals all wounds_**

_~unknown_

My dreams were so fucked up and insane, I won't even try to explain them. I woke up in the burn unit, but I didn't know it. It looked like some sort of hell, and thanks to a fine assortment of various medicines, I was hallucinating heavily. I woke up scared and hurt in more ways than one, and I also felt an emotion I wasn't use to feeling. I was lonely. My body was too weak to do much, but I leaped up from my bed and ran.

I didn't make it far before a man rammed me into the wall and held me there till I calmed down. I screamed and clawed all the while as if they were a monster. Someone injected me with a sedative and I slipped back to sleep.

_..._

Next time I woke up, it was very different. I was strapped down, and it was dark. Everything hurt. From my toes to my head, and my head especially. After a while of sitting in the dark, feeling ready to piss myself in fear, I felt brave and felt around to see where the bandages were.

There was one on my leg, and some thick bandages on my inner thigh, rubbing against my crotch in the most uncomfortable way. One arm was bandaged loosely, and my stomach was tightly. On the right side of my face, I could feel a bandage. It was big and my whole head felt like imploding, so I knew I must've burned my head.

And it immediately scared me. I had enough fun hiding my scars, I didn't need one on my face from a fire I didn't start. I chocked on a sob.

Everything hurt and I was sad. I cried. Not something I'll admit to doing often, but I definitely did here. Eventually a nurse came in, held my hand and told me the situation while I cried for my father like a ten year old.

Yep, I was nearly seventeen and crying for my father, but given the circumstance it isn't surprising. I needed some support.

Turns out, the nurse told me, that I had third degree burns covering 35 percent of my face, and now 40 percent of my whole body. I nodded to tell the nurse I understood, couldn't do much else, and waited for my parents to show up and pay me a much needed visit.

I would meet my best friend and learn a whole bunch of useful information in that burn clinic, but at that moment I just wanted to be home.

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**Yes, I know last chapter I said we would meet blu (or red) this chapter and we haven't yet. Next chapter we meet a important character and Miss Pauling though, so bear with me! One more chapter and we are done with the origins, so don't get bored and run off please!**

**Thanks for reading, hope you liked it, please drop me a review, and have a wonderful day.  
**


	4. Chapter 4

**Hi. Thanks to everyone who's reviewed. I've gotten some awesome response. To Cruz: the pyro's gender really hasn't been revealed. That game theory thing isn't proof. Some people strongly think pyro is male, others strongly female. I'd be open to either, but I'd like to think it's female so that's why it is in this story. I'm glad you like the story, but sorry that the language is getting to you. I just imagine the pyro as a potty mouth so... yeah. **

**Sorry this chapter is so long, I had to cut some things out.**

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**_~The serial arsonist is the most difficult to apprehend because the evidence is burned up._**

_~Joseph Wambaugh_

The first two times my parents visited, I was asleep and missed them. The third time they visited, I leapt out of the hospital bed and probably gave them the biggest hug I'd ever given them, one of few, and then pretended it never happened.

I asked if either of them had any cigarettes or matches, they didn't of course, so I sat back down and waited for all the questions. There's always questions. Mom was a wreck. She kept staring at the bandages wrapped around my head and blinking, as if next time she opened her eye's they'd be gone. Dad wasn't that much better, in fact, that was the only time in my entire life I can recall him crying.

I don't like seeing him cry. I try to forget it ever happened.

The next thirty minutes were probably rather normal considering the situation, full of hugs and nice words and all that shit, but then my father handed me the newspaper with an article on the accident.

Gas stations don't just blow up, and I was happy to have an explanation. Focusing on the newspaper print was a chore and after five minutes of staring at it my mom read it out loud, once again, I'll just blame the drugs.

Turns out, someone cut the gas lines, and it was a ticking time bomb for however long it took for some guy to drop a cigarette. The newspapers were calling it a tragedy because eleven people got caught in the explosion, I was one of the _three_ who lived.

Ehh.

The thing that got me though, was that the gas lines were cut. They don't cut themselves, and no one accidentally cuts up a bunch of gas lines, someone did it on purpose.

The only thought in my head was the possibility of another arson in town. In my town, where I should be the only one. I felt oddly territorial as if setting fires was mine, no one else's hobby, but I was in no condition to do anything about it.

Then my dad asked if I was the one who did it, and he sounded near tears again. His face was serious, like usual, but it felt more sinister this time.

I looked him in the eye with the eye of mine that wasn't hidden by bandages and said no. It was nice not to have to lie for once. "I swear I didn't do it."

He nodded. Then he asked me if I started the fire a night before the accident, the fire at the racetrack.

"..."

"Did you?" My heart flipped flopped.

I knew both of them were looking for me to say no, and they would've believed me if I did, however I never was very good at telling lies. I told them I did start that fire, and I'm sure they heard the damage reports so I didn't need to tell them I killed a man too, they already knew.

I didn't have the courage to ask who died.

Mom cried, I whimpered, and Dad yelled. His voice was like ice shards, every word hurt. So none of the nurses or other patients in the clinic would understand, he yelled in Japanese. My Japanese is only so-so, hadn't spoke it in years, so about half of the lecture I missed, but I got the gist of it.

The guilt was smothering. As if the knowledge of killing a man (or woman or child) wasn't enough combined with the pain of all of my burns, there was the forced guilt from my father. I was never good with feelings, especially expressing them, but I was at a total loss of what to do.

"I'm sorry." I meant it.

**_~Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light._**

_~Helen Keller_

In the burn unit, the nurses recognized that people got bored, mostly because you couldn't leave. They wheeled me out into the rec room, which may be one of the most depressing places on earth. Everything was a pristine white and the walls were covered in windows that let us see outside to the beautiful weather that none of us could enjoy. I saw people who had been melted like a candle in there, people with no chance of ever leading a normal life and might as well hide their faces in paper bags. I was lucky, said the nurses, the damage done to my face wasn't actually that bad.

Compared to these guys without so much as two identifiable eye slits, it was great. Luckily, those patients often didn't journey into the rec room.

In the room, I also met my best friend. He was white, and through the dense bandages wrapped around his face (this was a burn unit remember) I could pick up some unruly red hair. His left face area must've been completely scaled away, but I could still tell he was around four or five years older and freckled.

He was always in the rec room, and everyday I would be wheeled over, or limp over to him, and we'd be left to our own devices.

For the first week and a half the only bits of conversation we had were pained grunts and moans and complaints. We were both too drugged to do so much as talk about the weather outside. It took me a week and a half to even learn his name. The only reason we even persisted to sit next to each other, was the fact that we both suffered facial injuries and if need be could express how much it sucked to each other.

The first real bit of conversation we had went like this:

"What's your name?" I answered and asked him back. He answered.

"This place sucks."

"Yep."

The second piece of conversation when like this:

"I always wondered how you turned out." His voice was charming, if not a little gruff and raspy, and he spoke about near everything like he was speaking of the weather or something normal, though most of the time it wasn't normal.

It took me a minute to realize that was a weird thing for him to say. I grunted and waited for him to continue.

"...Do you recognize me?" I stared at him for a full two minutes before shaking my head no. Who was this fucker?

He hummed a familiar tune and said something like "I expected that much" or "I assumed so."

"Should I?"

"Yeah, I'm the man who drug you out of that burning building over a year ago." He said nonchalantly with a raised eyebrow.

Oh. Ohhh. Why hadn't I seen it earlier? I felt like a fucking dope. _This_ was the firefighter that saved me from that burning night club over a year ago, the one with the painted gas mask and lopsided smile (extra lopsided now).

I didn't reply quick enough, so he continued. His voice deadpanned. "I was also the man who got to hold you still while the police confirmed your rape case cos' the ambulance was taking forever to show up and you were bleeding."

I really wished he hadn't said that. It made conversation a lot harder and left a bad taste in my mouth. "I don't remember that."

"You wouldn't, you were pretty out of it at that point, but come on. You have to remember me." His eye (only one was visible) searched mine for any sign of recognition, nearly begging for it.

"I remember you."

He nodded and we both fell silent again. He picked a lighter from his pocket and played with it. I wondered where he got it because I really wanted one. I almost asked for it.

"You started that fire, the one I took you out of, right?"

I nodded. I expected the fireman to scold me or something, and in a way, he did.

"That was very amateur you know. You should've been out of there the minute you lit the place."

I didn't like him calling my work amateur, and I felt like defending it, but instead I just stared at his scarred up hands fidget with the lighter. My mouth felt oddly dry.

"Be more careful with your fires, you don't want to get caught in them."

Well duh. Of course I don't want to be caught in them. I would've told him that was the worst piece of advice ever, but he continued.

"Just get smart about it and you'll stay out of this place a lot more."

"I'm not in here cause I burned myself, it was someone else's mess." I huffed.

His face paled, but only for a second. "So you're not totally useless at starting fires?"

"I'm really good at it, I've just had off days."

He nodded to show he understood. "Suppose without you, I wouldn't have a job." He pocketed his lighter.

I nodded and we both settle back into a comfortable silence. I, an arsonist, should feel uncomfortable or guilty, or something bad when with a firefighter, right? But I didn't. He didn't look at me like I was a monster, or a scarred freak, or even like some sort of convict.

And that's why we became friends, if at first you could even call it that.

The next day I asked him why he was here. He licked his lips and opened his mouth a few times and then closed it uselessly. He resembled a gaping goldfish. After a minute he spoke up. "An accident at the racetrack... Support board fell when I was checking to see if anyone was in there."

Ha. Ha ha. Hilarious. A great fucking coincidence. And wait, _it gets better. _

After gaping and spacing out for a minute, I found the courage to tell him I started that fire, and he just laughed it off. He laughed a lot of things off.

"It was a good fire."

I almost felt proud. "Thank you."

"Now, what did you do to yourself this time? Why are you here?"

"For your information, this isn't my fault, I was a bystander walking home when the gas station by highway H blew up." I said in an overly sassy way and gave him a gentle shove in the shoulder. I was doing my best to be friendly, especially so he wouldn't rat me out.

"You're fucking joking right?" His face fell a few shades lighter till it was as white as paper.

"Nope."

_This is where it gets better._ "'Cause I sabotaged that place."

We gave each other sideways looks before I asked him a bunch of questions. Turns out the fireman (who was about 20) was an arsonist too. A damn good one too.

The irony was simply too much.

**_~Give a man a match, and he'll be warm for a minute, but set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his short life._**

_~unknown_

My new friend (for various reasons I will not tell you his name) asked me about a bunch of fires he's had the pleasure to extinguish over the years, and I'd tell him which one's I'd lit and which ones weren't me.

He told me which ones were ridiculous, which ones were good, and how much damage each one did. It was a wonder to us both how I hadn't been caught yet.

I asked him why he was a firefighter if he was also an arsonist, and he just shrugged and said that sometimes he likes to play the hero and the villain. It didn't make much sense, but he was enough of a poet that it sounded nice out of his mouth.

I nodded along even though I knew I could never be the same. I would always get to play the bad guy, but I didn't really mind it.

I asked him why I don't see much of his work in the paper or on the news, and he gave me the most important advice. He said that he tries not to make a habit of starting fires where he lives. 'Don't shit where you eat' he said. He would travel far out of town to start his fires, and he said that the gas station was a 'one in a dozen' and he really shouldn't have done, it was too close.

"Don't shit where you eat, it makes it easier for them to find you."

At one point, I used that like it was law.

Most of the days in the burn unit, we would sit by each other and no words would be exchanged. Sometimes we would pass his lighter back and forth, and sometimes we would just stare at the hallucinations the pain meds gave us. I had a lot more hallucinations than him, by far, and sometimes I would just sit down and ask him what was real and what wasn't.

Most of the stuff wasn't real.

My friend would complain that they were giving me a dosage of meds to high and that's what was causing the hallucinations, but I doubt that was it.

An example of one of the more common hallucinations was that fucking greasy man from the previous year, and at one point it reduced me to near tears just thinking about it. Lets forget the hallucinations ever happened because it was an embarrassing hallucination he and a couple nurses had to coach me out of.

At one point, my boss came to visit me. Now, the burn unit didn't really hand out bras, so of course I was showing what pathetic excuse of tits I had. My hair, which had grown a bit, wasn't slicked back like it normally was. Instead, it hung in awkward toughs in my face.

I clearly wasn't a the 18-19 year old Randy I was supposed to be.

He didn't care. He said I still had a job when I got out of there. I thanked him and he left after agreeing to say high to the other guys at the shop for me. I liked my boss from then on.

My parents came to visit me a lot too, every other day, but we never really looked each other in the eye, and we barely spoke. I knew my parents were ashamed of me, but I just ignored that because throughout my entire life it was the same deal. I stopped fucking caring years ago.

**_~It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars._**

_~Garrison Keillor_

Eventually the awkward wrapping around my thigh came off finally allowing me to see the new skin. And yes, the inside of my right thigh looked like someone attacked it with a flaming weed wacker. Next time I got with someone for sexual relations it would be one hell of an interesting scar to explain.

Then again, they all would be hard to explain, even the most visible scars.

Thanks to that specific injury, I was left with a bit of a limp. I still had that limp long after the wound healed up, but every time I'd realize I wasn't limping my leg would start hurting and I'd start limping again. It was a little limp, not always there, and almost like a waddle at times. It was something psychological, said the doctors.

It was also fucking embarrassing because in real life, I was limping for no _real_ reason. I was imagining pain.

I got over the news of the limp fairly easily, it didn't bother me. A lot of people had one, and though it would look funny, I could still run. I brushed it off.

Then came the day I got the bandages on my face removed. He, the firefighter, got his removed too, just the day before, but I didn't want to see him till I got mine removed too. I didn't go in the rec room that day.

One of the nurses cut away the wrappings, and smiled at me. It was fake smile, but not to forced so I remained hopeful. She handed me a beat up old mirror. "Take a look hon."

Angry red clouded around my eye and up past my ear like a puffy check mark. I had no eyelashes or eyebrow on the left side of my face, and the scar tissue that formed around my left eye made me always look... tired. Warn down. Older. My ear was a chewed up piece of hot wax, barley heard a thing out of it for awhile.

The nurse told me it really wasn't that bad, but it felt like a it was. Just looking at it felt like a slap.

"It's really not that bad honey."

"Okay."

"Really, it isn't."

"OKAY."

...

I held myself together till I got to the rec room and sat down with the other arsonist. I looked him in the eye and twitched. His whole right side was obliterated, as if it was shoved into an oven and then carved like a pumpkin. Compared to him, I was lucky, but I still felt horrible.

He was playing with his lighter, and his face (the not burned side) was stock serious, not something he usually was. We sat next to each other in silence for a bit, the only sound was the other patients in the room that were watching the tele and the on and off of his lighter.

I sniffled. The redhead turned to me and gave a lopsided smile. "See you're not all that thrilled with your results either, huh?"

I nodded.

He grabbed my face and made me look at him while he judged it. "Now, it really isn't that bad, I mean, it isn't nice... but it's not bad." He ran his thumb over the sensitive scabs.

"You too."

"Now that's a lie."

"You're right, but I don't really care how you look."

He laughed and the serious moment was over. "You too."

...

Thanks to my new look, I was a little hesitant to look others in the eye. I just couldn't do it. After I was released from the burn unit, I returned back to work and everything seemed like normal. I had the same dwindling family relationship, the same job, and the same shed, just like how I left it. I left my friend. I went back to see him after a few days, but my that time he had already been released too.

I'd see him again and I knew it.

The day I got out of the burn unit I dusted off my flamethrower, borrowed my dad's car and I burned down a barn. It was about 10 miles out of town, so it didn't quite fit the 'don't shit where you eat' rule but I had needed to burn something for months so I didn't care.

Even though roughly 40 percent of my body was covered in mismatching burns, I didn't fear the fire. I had half a mind to let it burn me down along with every other building I set a match to. I didn't of course, that would be silly. I left when the barn was still standing.

That fire didn't even make the newspapers, so my father never found out.

I got home in the early early hours of the morning and curled up on my bed to go to sleep when I saw something laying on my dresser. It was a envelope. A new one. It wasn't there when I left. On the front it clearly said "CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION FOR MISS-" the rest had been scratched out with sharpie. Inside was a letter from RED, Reliable Excavation Demolition. It was a job offer.

I didn't give it a second look before tearing it to pieces and letting it smolder in my ash tray.

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**Yep, didn't get to Miss Pauling in this one either, but the whole thing was already so long, and so rushed. Sorry if the quality wasn't as good due to it being rushed. Sorry for anyone who is getting bored with back story as well, but we're getting there! RED will come back soon.  
**

**Do any of you fine people like the firefighter?  
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**Thanks for all your support. Please drop me a review and have a fantastic day.  
**


	5. Chapter 5

**Hello. So, about half the comments so far have been pointing out spelling/grammar mistakes. Thanks for pointing those out. Last chapter had some... silly mistakes. At one point I put 'genital' instead of 'gentle.' XD Yep. Not sure if that was just me being special or auto correct gone wrong. Either way, I don't mind when you point out stuff like that. As long as you're nice about it, I like it. It helps me as an author. **

**Now, this is a mega chapter. I won't be updating for a week, so this one is uber long. If I did it right, this will hit your feels too. **

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_**~Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.**_

_~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr._

I was home for a week no more than before my firefighter friend paid me a visit again, around mid day. I hadn't been talking to others much due to my... lesser self esteem, and for a week the only other people I conversed with where mom and dad. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy to see him.

He stood in the doorway with his hands behind his back, standing politely, and asked if my parents were home. I said no, they were at work.

"What the fuck do you want?"

He then stepped in and admired the place. He complemented the house for small talk. I shrugged.

He said he was just checking up on me, making sure I was doing okay. I was doing fine and told him so.

"Okay."

Then he continued. "I brought you something."

"Oh?"

"Yep. So you don't suffocate yourself." He gave his famous lopsided smile and pulled a gas mask out from behind his back. "Breathing is important ya know."

"Why?"

His smile dissolved into a shit-eating smirk. "Well, you need to breath because you need air, which is what you breath in-"

"Not that you smart ass."

He laughed. I like his laugh.

"Why give me this?"

"Well, us firemen wear them so we can _breath. _I figured you could use one for when you face smoke and toxic gasses."

I just stared at him.

"Burning shit often gives off tons of toxic gasses."

"I know that! But... Thank you. Thank you a lot." I still didn't understand why he cared enough to give it to me. It made me feel funny, and I was never good with feelings.

I looked down at the gas mask. It was black, covered the entire face with goggles for eye holes, and worn straps held it to your head. Till this day I don't know what make it was, or what year, but I liked it.

"Yep. Anytime." He smiled again. Sometimes it bugged me how charming he acted. I then did something I would never do for anyone else. I invited him to stay. He said he'd be delighted too and made himself at home.

For the next few hours we sat at the kitchen table and enjoyed some coffee. We talked about the randomest things, all the while the gas mask sat on the kitchen table. At three o'clock he left, and I put the gas mask in the shed so my parents wouldn't see it. It was a good day.

...

Next week, on the same day, he came back again. It was on my seventeenth birthday, but I don't think he realized it. Just luck.

"Let's go grab some grub."

"Why?"

"I don't know, just cause? Are you allergic to food or something? Lets go, I'll pay."

"Okay."

And so he drove us to a dinner. And we sat at a booth and ordered a couple of burgers. And it was weird. Everyone was staring and he didn't give a single fuck, he just hummed a tune and ignored them.

He didn't care about the way the waitress cringed every time she saw the right half of his face, or the left half of mine. He pretended not to notice how the kids a few tables down had their eyes glued to us, or the old couple across the dinner who weren't even making an attempt at not staring.

God did I hate the starting. It made my skin itch and my insides bubble with the need to give them something real to stare at.

My friend simply ignored it. I did my best to follow his lead, but dear god there are little things I hate more that being looked at like that. I know I imagining it twice as worse than it really was, but it made my breath hitch and scars tingle. Then the tingling developed into a dull burn.

"...You okay?"

"Fucking awesome." Not sure if I said that or just thought it.

He put down his burger and he dropped the happy nonchalant tone in his voice. "Are. You. Okay?"

I felt sick and I didn't even know why. Colors seemed to just blend together and words stopped making sense.

"I'll go pay the bill and we can get out of here."

He left to pay the bill. And I'm not crazy, but in the corner of my vision I swear that god damn greasy man from when I was fifteen standing and staring. He wasn't. I knew he wasn't. It felt like he was.

The next few minutes were a bit of a blur. Literally. Everything was just blurs in my vision.

Eventually I found myself laying on my couch with the firefighter sitting in the chair next to me, sweating like a pig.

"You okay?"

"Yep."

"What happened...?"

"Don't know, but I feel better now."

"No, really, what happened. Do I need to take you to a doctor?"

I told him that I simply panicked and lost control. As similar as we could be at times, he never had that kind of problem. I hated feeling weird, even weird compared to the arson/fire fighter with half a face.

He made some coffee, stayed for another hour and left before my parents came home and I had to go to work.

_**~Genius is initiative on fire.**_

_~Holbrook Jackson_

My friend visited me once a week. It was scheduled. Sometimes he'd pick me up from work too, we'd grab dinner or something like that. I liked it, though till this day I don't know if it was supposed to be some sort of romantic thing, or a brother/sister relationship. Sometimes I thought he was gay, but I couldn't be sure.

I didn't love him, at least, I don't think I did. I don't think I ever could, I don't know if I'm capable of loving anybody. He didn't know what to call our relationship either, so we didn't call it anything.

One day he picked me up from work and told me we were going to Windom, a town not all that far away, a few hours at most.

He said something like: "They have this textile factory, and I've gone there a few times to scope out the factory, it'll burn like crazy. You gotta go." Yep. The firefighter only did this sort of thing every several months to reduce the chance of getting caught. I didn't know whether to be honored or not that he invited me.

And thus I went, but I told him we needed to stop by my house first to grab some things.

I told my parents some phony half-assed excuse as to where I was going, they stopped caring by that point because they knew if they said no I would do it anyway.

I went to the shed and motioned for him to follow, more for the purpose of showing off my workshop than anything else. He followed like a lost puppy.

He marveled at it, and it made me proud. Then I showed him my flamethrower. He marveled at that too. I let him hold it even, but I made sure his hands were clean and that he held it properly.

He gave it back to me and walked around the shed, eyeing all the unfinished projects and blueprints lining the walls. "More flamethrower plans?"

"Kinda, they'll never get done. They all have some flaw that I can't work out."

"Okay. Um, could I take a few?"

The one eyebrow I had raised. "Why?"

"I don't know, they look cool, I could hang them on the walls in my apartment or something."

That sounded fucking stupid. "If you want." I handed him the blueprints for the heavy and heavier-burning one with a dragon shaped nozzle and the one that would be built out of mostly lawn mower parts.

I grabbed my flamethrower and the gas mask and we left. He shoved the stupid blueprints in his glove box and I put my stuff in back, he had his own gas mask, a couple gallons of gasoline and a fire ax back there.

"Let's go."

...

The textile factory burnt well. The gas mask worked well. The flamethrower worked fantastically. We didn't stay long enough to see the flames spread to anymore than 1/6 of the factory, but if we waited any longer we could've been seen. The fireman was really shaky. Shaky enough that I had to drive home, but before he left, he walked up to the nearest tree and pinned a piece of paper to it.

"What are you doing?"

"It's my trademark. So they know the same guy starts all of the fires." The fire behind us roared.

"That's silly. What the hell is on the paper?" I pushed him out of the way to see what it was. A stylized 19 sat in the middle.

"It's my nineteenth fire. Real fire." He explained. _Only 19?_

I huffed before telling him quietly. "Having a trademark is... fucking stupid. You tell me all the time to make precautions so I don't get caught, but you do this."

"Yeah, I do." He replied defensively. He seemed a bit annoyed.

"That's just fucking stupid."

"God, do you have to curse so much?"

"Yeah, I do." I sent him a challenging glare.

He waved me off and stormed over to the car. I kicked him out of the front seat because he hands were shaking too much to even put the key in the ignition. I started the car (I also made sure the headlights were off) and took side roads till we were a safe distance away.

For most of the ride, the car was silent.

"How many people do you think we just killed." It was a question but he didn't ask it like one. His attitude, which was usually happy go lucky was now completely serious whereas I felt full of adrenaline and rush.

Sure, a nagging feeling solidified in my stomach at the thought of someone else dying at my hand, but I felt to content to even care at the moment.

"Don't know." I shrugged. Couldn't have been many, if any, the place had been closed. Then again, that was my logic for the racetrack and someone roasted in there.

The whole idea of someone dying in there messed with him a lot less than it messed with me. I realized we were more different than I thought. Yet when I looked over at him, he was smiling.

We agreed that we wouldn't start fires together anymore, and it was a whole two weeks before I saw him again.

...

One nice thing about his trademark was, it always made some town's newspaper, sometimes even the channel ten news. I was always able to tell when a fire was his.

_**~It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.**_

_~John Green_

I'm not sure if I ever loved my parents. I felt a connection to them, sure, but love might be too big of a word to use. I definitely didn't love my mother when she left.

The worst thing is, I think I'm the one who drove her out. My father and I watched as she packed her bag and simply left. She didn't need us. I suppose we didn't _need _her either but we definitely wanted her.

I came home that day in a police car, I'd gotten in a fight and sent two to the hospital. I wasn't proud of it, but like always it took a few minutes for the feelings and guilt to sink in. The cops thought I was a boy at first and told my parents that their son was in a fight and beat to people half to death.

They started it.

My dad defended me. His logic was solid and his days in law school did us well, the police left after only a few minutes.

Then my mom exploded.

Before she left she told us that I was an unruly child destined for nothing but prison and my dad wasn't half the man he pretended to be because he didn't do anything about it. She slung insults that would look bad on my lips, let alone her own.

She left. It didn't seem real.

She left and it was, in all reality, my fault.

I felt the damn greasy man laughing behind me, breathing on my ear, daring myself to remind her that I was human. Daring to remind her that I bled red and cried just like her, that I felt emotions too.

And I would've ran after her to prove it, but I didn't think I could. My eyes were dry. I acted calm, and though I'd just been in one hell of a gang fight I had nothing more than bruises and a black eye.

After thirty minutes I fully realized what really just happened and fell apart.

My father did too, but he didn't come out of his room. It's for the best, I mean, I didn't want to see him cry.

Middle of the night I snuck out and lit the hills on fire. It was the only way I could think of to handle the emotions, emotions that I really didn't know how to handle. I'd come to accept that I probably didn't love my mother but I'd never thought that she didn't love me.

...

That week when my friend the firefighter came to visit, I couldn't do anything but cry. I didn't cry often, rarely ever, but I feel that if I had done it more I wouldn't have been such a monster.

I was the first person to call myself a monster.

"God-" Won't say his name- "I'm a monster." I sobbed out.

He sighed. "Yeah, well, if you're a monster I probably am too."

That didn't help. As similar as we acted at times, it always fell through that we were very different people.

"I don't care if you're a monster." He pulled me into one of those awkward one armed hugs and ruffled my hair in a big brotherly way. "I also don't care what you look like, that your mother is a bitch, or that you have a slight tendency to curse excessively." He hummed his favorite tune and we spent the rest of the hour in silence.

It bugged me how he didn't deny my statement, but I got over it with the help of my job and my workshop keeping me busy. It soon became just another thought in the back of my head waiting to resurface.

...

I was sitting with my father outside, feeding the fire pit. I'd started using it daily again. My father even through a couple of family photos into it. I watched several pictures of my mother go up in smoke.

My dad called me. He asked me to never leave him because he wouldn't be able to handle it.

I agreed. And that's why on my eighteenth birthday I didn't move out. I had enough money for it for sure, but it wouldn't feel right.

...

The day I turned eighteen my friend took me out for several drinks. I got quite drunk. At the time, the drinking age was only eighteen in New York, though in a few years it would change. My friend drove me home too, wishing me a happy birthday and telling me to take care.

It was a good day.

The next day my mother came back. She claimed she came back to wish me a happy birthday and that she was only there was a week.

She never told me happy birthday once, in fact, she even questioned when I was going to move out. Luckily Dad moved in there and said I didn't have to, that he didn't want me too. That made me feel nice because we both knew that if moved out my mother might've moved back in.

I wanted to tell that bitch to get the hell out of my house. Dad didn't.

She questioned if I was ever going to get married, or if I would let my hair grow out, or if I would go to law school like my father. I told her to fuck off, and when we butted heads, my father even took my side. It was a good feeling while it lasted.

The day after that my friend picked me up from work. We went out for dinner and I told him the situation. He just laughed and told me to give that bitch hell.

I intended too, and dear god did I ever, I would take it all back if I could.

...

That night my mother and father were asleep. I was watching the fire pit. It seemed like any day. I built the fire up a bit more.

And I was stupid.

Really stupid.

I swear I saw something moving at the other end of the property, something tall. I went over there to investigate. Truth be told, whatever it was I don't remember well, and it was probably just a hallucination, seeing as I had those from time to time.

Dear god, whatever happened next I don't really know but I thought I was chasing something, someone, off my property. I really did! When I turned back around and realized nothing was there, the yard was on fire. The grass near the fire pit had catch.

And it was spreading fast. I sprinted back, completely ignoring my supposed limp and I erupted into the shed, searching for a fire extinguisher. I knew I had one, probably a couple but my head had blanked and I found nothing.

The smoke grew too great to see anything out of, so I put on the gas mask. As soon as flames started to nip at the sides of the shed I got the hell out of there, (I even grabbed my flamethrower before I left so it wouldn't melt in the fire.) I had enough flammables/explosives in there to blow it to kingdom come.

I was about twelve steps out of the shed and running to get my parents out of the house when it blew up.

The blast knocked the gas mask off my face, the flamethrower out of my hands, and me to the ground. I landed in fire. It took me several seconds to get up.

It hurt like fucking Christ. Burns always do, and I landed on my side. My whole left arm left fried, my leg seemed mostly okay, my jeans protected me well, but my face tingled with a feeling that told me it would hurt like hell in a minute when the shock wore off.

More burns. Even more.

I put the mask back on (for breathing purposes,) and grabbed the flamethrower, which I later ditched in the bushes by the front door. The house was on fire. Everything was on fire. I feared it. It felt like I was sizzling away in the heat.

Adrenaline pulled me up the stairs and I burst through my parents door. My mother lay in one bed while my father in the other, both of them unconscious. Probably from smoke, they were likely slowly suffocating without knowing about it or being able to do anything about it.

And once again, it was my fault.

My father wasn't a heavy man. Neither was my mother. I could've carried either of them, but not both. I don't know why I chose my mother. I slung her over my shoulder and turned around without thinking twice about it.

On the way out I fell down twice, and the second time I fell it was so hard to get back up. I knew that If I didn't my mother and I would die, my father could already be dead, but if I died I wouldn't be able to get him out anyway.

I took of the gas mask and strapped it to my mother, who may or may not have been breathing. Blood drizzled out of the filter, my blood. As soon as I saw that I realized how much my face hurt. I didn't want to get up. I blanked out and next thing I knew I was coughing and carrying my mother out the door. I tossed her down in the dirt driveway, nearly on the street. My bad leg felt like it was about to fall off.

And I had to sit down. I was too weak to walk back in and save my father. I was a weakling. I wasn't a dragon.

My breath wheezed. Breathing was hard. Every time I blinked and opened my eyes more of the house was on fire. My mother started waking up. At first it was just a fit of coughing, but within a minute she was awake. She tore the bloody mask off her face and with fear filled eyes looked at me. She didn't look past the new trauma on my face before collapsing in on herself and grossly sob.

I almost didn't notice when the firetruck came. Someone down the road must've seen the smoke and called the fire department, good thing too. Sirens brought me back to reality. The truck pulled up behind us. Men ran about. They screamed directions at each other.

One fireman with a painted mask knelt down in front of me.

"Oh thank god you're safe!" He exclaimed and pulled me into a bone crushing hug, my aching face squished against his rubber coat. I made a muffled sound that sounded almost like a sob but he probably took it as a hello.

He didn't ask how it happened, because we both already knew. I just hope he knew it was an accident. My mom didn't ask who he was, she was still in too much shock. The other firemen centered hoses on the house.

My friend gently grabbed my face and turned it so he could see the new trauma. "The paramedics will be here soon, for both of you." My mother still didn't look at us.

He pulled me to my feet. "It'll be okay." He gave one of his famous lopsided smiles.

"私の父はそ-" I cut myself off as soon as I realized I was speaking the wrong language and tried again. "My father is in there."

His eyes went wide and my mother let out another pathetic sob. Tears streamed down my one eye, the other one's tear ducts had melted shut. The firefighter placed a kiss on my forehead.

"I'll get 'em." He promised.

He yelled to the others, and another firefighter of whom I can't name tended to my mother and I. Two men, including my friend, entered the house. I don't think I breathed for two straight minutes, and though I never really believed in a god but I was praying.

_'Please.' _Nothing happened.

_'Please.' _More nothing.

_'Please be safe.'_

And then the house collapsed. Firefighters all around yelled, but I didn't hear any words. Both my mother and I let out a wail of despair.

The house was a pile of burning rubble.

And it was my fault.

The only people in the world that might've loved me, and the only one's I might've loved back, were just crushed. It felt like my chest, more like my heart, had been compressed into a tiny little ball and then swallowed.

I put my hand on my mother's shoulder as the firefighters continued trying to put out the fire and dig through the rubble. The fireman that was with us ran to help the others.

"..Mom." I wanted her to turn around and look at me. I wanted her to see me being human, to see me crying, bleeding the same she color she does, to realize this was a mistake (which human make a lot of) and not on purpose. I wanted her to hug me too. I wanted her to stop the pain, both in my head, on my face and scattered all over my body. I wanted her to love me.

"Get." If I had a gun I would've sent a bullet through my brain.

"Mom..."

"Get."

I took one last look at the house, and bent down to take the gas mask. I put it over my face. It rubbed against the burn painfully but I didn't bother to adjust it.

"Get." She repeated.

I left while the firemen were still busy.

I just started walking, more like limping, away. I didn't have a set direction, but when I was probably a hundred feet from what was my house, I bent down, and remembered the most useless of conversations.

"_It's my trademark. So they know the same guy starts all of the fires."  
_

"_That's silly. What the hell is on the paper?" I pushed him out of the way to see what it was. A stylized 19 sat in the middle. _

"_It's my nineteenth fire. Real fire." He explained.  
_

_I huffed before telling him quietly. "Having a trademark is... fucking stupid. You tell me all the time to make precautions so I don't get caught, but you do this." _

"_Yeah, I do." He seemed a bit annoyed. _

"_That's just fucking stupid."_

I got the whole trademark thing. At least, I thought I did. It more for you than anyone else. It was so you remembered the fires, and if you forgot, someone else was keeping a running tally for you, because they knew which ones were yours. Or that could not be it at all. Either way, I bent down and with my own blood dripping out of the mask and covering my arm, I wrote a twenty-four.

I'm not sure if it was my twenty-fourth fire or his twenty-fourth fire. I'm not sure of which tally I was using.

They'd find the number, I told myself. I walked off the road and the opposite direction of the town, so of course I didn't get to see the slow-as-fuck police or the late ambulance showing up, but I heard them.

As a kid I always wanted to feel like a dragon. Now all I wanted was to feel human.

* * *

**That was long an a lot happened. Any good? Did it hit any feels? Well, for three chapters now I've been promising RED coming in, but I just keep adding more and more till the point where it won't fit. It'll be in next chapter but don't take my word for it because I've lied to many times. Have a nice day and thanks for all the support, and if you think you know something about the story or have sniffed out a plot twist or key point, go ahead and ask me if you got it. A few people have found some already. **

**Please leave me a review, and have a fucking fantastic day. :D  
**


	6. Chapter 6

**Yeah... this chapter is a bit late. To make up for its tardiness, I made it extra long. Hope you like it, it's an important chapter. Thanks to everyone who's been supportive so far. **

**Also, I have a proof reader now. Her name is Shius, and she is awesome. Many thanks to her, she showed me just how many mistakes I've been making.**

* * *

_**Every nerve that can thrill with pleasure, can also agonize with pain.**_

_~Horace Mann_

It hurt.

I haven't ever gone with burns untreated before. I always got to the hospital or got them patched up at a reasonable time, but I had been wandering for four days with open wounds on both my face and arm.

And it hurt. Dear God, do burns hurt.

One was festering on the side of my face, rotting, searing, throbbing. I was scared to take off the gas mask and expose the wound, because I was afraid to see the infection.

I knew it had to be infected. I could_ feel_ it slowly killing me. Luckily the burn on my arm wasn't infected, in fact, it was healing quite nicely. The scabbing made it uncomfortable to bend, so I held it straight at my side and used the other hand for stuff like picking up objects. Other than that it was fine.

The sun was not fine.

The sun was ridiculously hot and made everything seem fuzzy. I was in the middle of nowhere, my face was horribly wounded, and I was running on an empty tank (food wise.) On my fifth day of wandering across the country side of what I thought was New York, I fainted, either from blood poisoning, heat stroke, or just plain exhaustion.

I was walking down a paved road when it happened, wheat fields on both sides of me. My knees gave way. The midday heat encased me like a blanket and suddenly the road looked like a lovely place to sleep. _'Fuck.' _ I shut my eyes and I was unconscious before my head even smacked against the pavement.

...

I was expecting to wake up in a hospital again, like the past two times I've blacked out. I was expecting to wake up fully bandaged and on a heavy dose of pain meds.

That didn't happen.

I woke up in the back of a crappy camper-van that might've smelled like pee. Someone was driving up front and listening to horrible music. I felt around till I found the gas mask and tethered it to my belt so I wouldn't lose it.

"Don't you _dare _die in my van."

I said something to show I was awake and in pain, and not dead.

The man shouted back, "We're 'bout 20 miles till the nearest 'ospital. Won't be long now. Lucky ya aren't dead yet with tha infection. Lucky I was willing ta stop and pick up a sheila like you too, most people would'a drove on."

Whatever he really said went in through one ear and out the other, but it was something around those lines. His accent was irritating but I didn't care enough to try to figure where he was from, or even make a reply. I just writhed around the van's floor till the vehicle rolled to a stop and some paramedics carried me into the hospital.

They took my clothes and mask and gave me a hospital gown, bandaged me up, then shoved needles in me, and then tried to get a name out of me. I didn't tell them, but not many other people could fit my physical description so it couldn't have been too hard to identify me.

After a heavy dose of drugs, I slept for a week. You can guess what I dreamed about.

...

**Medical report: **

The Infection was treated just in time and the blood poisoning wasn't too bad. The arm healed perfectly and will be expected to function on a normal level with scarring kept to a minimal, though still visible. Facial trauma is highly notable and requires constant attention, and without proper treatment the infection could relapse. Patient fusses over the bandages and often tries to take them off, much to the nurse's dismay.

Vision in left eye must be tested when the patient is in a more functional state, along with current mental health.

Patient does not react well to pain medication- she suffers from hallucinative side effects. Test to make sure the medication _is_ the cause of this.

Patient is delusional. Highly aggressive. Best kept sedated.

Estimated hospitalization time is one month.

-Doctor Eli Drake of burn ward, 14/07

...

The police showed up when I was still bedridden and too drugged to tell left from right. I was told by one jackass of an officer with an over sized mustache that as soon as the hospital would allow it, I would be arrested and charged with twenty four cases of arson, and ten murders.

I wondered if they thought that I murdered my friend and my father. Does it count as murder if it was on accident? I almost asked, but the man kept talking and my mouth felt dry. I blocked him out, whatever he had to say I already knew or had heard before.

By using the firefighters trademark, I got blamed for all _his_ fires. The trademark had been in use for five years, so it was suspected that I had been starting these fires since I was thirteen. They expected that I was able to start all of the fires, including the ones up to one hundred miles away from where I lived. It was ridiculous, but I didn't deny it.

No one would believe me if I said that, and I had started fires, just different, unmarked ones.

And... I kinda, almost _wanted_ to be arrested. I deserved it. I was guilty and every conscious second I was reminded of this. It was all I could think about.

Sometimes, when I would gaze over to the chair next to the hospital bed, I'd see that greasy guy I ran into at fifteen. He'd smoke, stare at me a bit, and recap the situation as if I didn't know, making sure I couldn't forget what I had done even for a second.

"You're losing your mind dear." He'd finish, and the statement couldn't be truer.

Sometimes when I looked at the empty chair, I'd see my father, crying silently with his face turning away from me.

One time I can recall a pink stuffed animal- like creature holding candy and rainbows. _That_ I had no problem ignoring because it was simply too crazy and unrealistic.

Sometimes though, it'd get really bad. I'd see my firefighter, in full uniform complete with his painted gas mask. He'd be covered in soot and blood, not an inch of clear skin, just splinters, burns and bone.

The corpse only hummed various rock songs, (its) eye holes staring at nothing.

"I'm sorry."

It, I refuse to call it he, for it wasn't real, It wasn't him, far from it (-) the real body would look so much worse.

"God damn I'm sorry. I'm fucking sorry." Nothing.

Even when my eyes grew wet and I called his name, praying that my own hallucination, my own twisted imagination, would be kind enough to respond.

When I told the nurse I was having hallucinations she said it was just a side effect of the medication and the infection (which I was handling nicely). However, I wasn't so sure at this point that that was the case. Eventually, I just stopped looking at the chair, and the hallucinations mellowed so I didn't pursue it any further.

The only reason I'd look at the chair at all was to check if my mother sat in it.

Not once did my mother visit me in the hospital. She didn't call, visit, or send mail, and that was a good thing because I wouldn't have been able to face her. The less reminders of home the better. I could imagine my mother trying to pick her life back up after losing her _technically_ ex-husband and his house to fire, and her daughter to the law.

She'd be fine, I concluded. She wasn't stupid and could make it on her own, as she had been.

_**~I've cried, and you'd think I'd be better for it, but the sadness just sleeps, and it stays in my spine the rest of my life.**_

_~Conor Oberst_

After a week and a half in the hospital I got a letter other than court information. It was from RED again, and I could only barely remember the first letter I received from them two years earlier. I shoved the envelope it in the bedpan and ignored it, never laying eyes on it again.

I regret not reading it. I regret not asking who delivered it too, but whoever did probably gave me the newspaper as well.

The newspaper was delivered anonymously. It was a report on my fire, and the headline clearly read-

**TWO DEAD IN FIRE, MORE INJURED AND ****SERIAL ARSONIST FOUND**

My breath hitched and I choked on air.

The title I could read clearly, but everything after that simply turned into what could've been Chinese for all I know. The drugs made reading small print impossible.

**TWO DEAD IN FIRE, MORE INJURED AND SERIAL ARSONIST FOUND**

I ripped the newspaper into tiny pieces. After the paper was reduced to scrap, I realized something and made a useless attempt to piece back the article as if it could still be read.

_Two dead in fire. _

I thought, _I thought__,_ that three were in the building. Didn't two firefighters go in to get my father? Am I making that up? Do I know which two died?

"Yes, you know very well who died." My hallucination spoke for me, materializing out of the air in the chair next to me. I knew that if I started to converse with these hallucinations regularly, I would officially lose all my marbles. I paid the man with shoulder length slicked back greasy hair no heed. If I ignored it long enough, it'd go away.

"Bitch, don't ignore me." He threatened. I didn't like being bullied by own head trip. I looked away and shut my eyes.

"I'm calling you." It persisted. I vowed to stop taking the pain medication.

The voice changed into one much more familiar, a voice that used to be friendly but the malice stuck. "Look at me you slut, don't pretend you don't know what you did."

I called out for a nurse.

...

After two weeks in the hospital, I decided I wanted out. It was stuffy. It smelled funny. There were no matches anywhere, and I didn't like the nurses and doctors looking at me as if I were a carrier of the plague. I can see why they didn't want to stick close to me, I had just been titled a 'serial arsonist,' but it stung none the less.

What I would've done before was just give my friend a call and he'd probably just come and sneak me out, probably bringing me a spare pair of clothes while he was at it.

I would've given anything to get out of that damned hospital gown. I would've given anything to find my gas mask too. I asked the next nurse who changed my dressings where the hell my stuff was. I think I scared her because she walked back out of the room without saying a word.

Eventually, after a couple hours of telling myself I would do it, I got up. My legs felt like jello and by head started throbbing, but it was really fine, a lot better than I had been feeling. I walked out the room and into the hallway. No one was there. The halls were empty, empty and white and silent. I chose a direction and limped that way.

I just needed to find my clothes and mask, just needed to know where they were. I found myself in the main lobby, searching through various closets with a few other patients giving me odd looks.

"Hello Si-... Uh, Miss? Can I help you?" A young male nurse from the desk asked.

I ignored him and kept on looking. I wouldn't be able to leave until I had my stuff (mainly mask). "Um, I'm not sure you should be out here, why don't I take you back to your room?"

I gave him the middle finger and walked -more like stumbled- onward.

"Ma'am I may need to call security, you're not allowed to do that."

"Where is my stuff?"

"I'll find you your stuff, just come with me."

"No, find it for me first."

"We keep all of our... clients personal possessions in the storage room 'till they are free to be released. When you leave we will give you your clothes back. Okay?"

Another nurse helped him return me to my room.

Another day passed and I was still hellbent on finding my clothes and getting out of there. I had no idea when they initially planned to release me, but when they did I wouldn't have a chance to do shit because I'd be whisked straight into a jail.

I deserved prison but I didn't want to go anymore, for various, obvious reasons that include being less comatose.

I tried escaping the hospital twice, each time making a detour to the 'storage room' where my stuff was supposed to be. Each time I got tackled, sedated, and woke up much later right back in the room.

When they say only bed rest, they mean it. I think they also believed that I was off to start a fire or murder other patients as well, so they were extra eager to catch me as soon as they saw me walking about.

The third time, I planned a bit more.

It was about noon, and a nurse had already seen to my needs. I waited until she left and I walked out of the room and searched for the nearest fire alarm. I pulled it.

The reaction was immediate. Total evacuation. I hid in one of the lavatories as the staff pushed everyone out the door, and it took awhile.

I searched the halls until I found a room labeled 'storage room.' Inside I found various clothes, and on the top shelf next to a couple oxygen tanks, I found my mask. I don't think the clothes I took were actually mine, but they fit and that was close enough. I rummaged around the storage room (which was kinda like a lost and found) and by luck I came across a lighter. It wasn't a fancy zippo or personalized lighter, no, it was just a crappy bic you'd pick up at a corner store.

But it was good enough. At this point the rest of the hospital was probably realizing this wasn't a real fire. I didn't have enough time to start something serious, but I did have enough time to grab one of the socks from the 'lost and found' and burn it. I held it close to the smoke alarm and didn't take it away till it was about all burnt up. Then I lit another sock and did the same till the smoke detector detected smoke and the sprinklers went off.

I pocketed the lighter with a sense of accomplishment. There. That would keep the fear of fire alive for at least a few more minutes.

As the chaos and evacuation continued on, I left. I squeezed past the crowd of sick people surprisingly well as they gathered outside the building and looked for smoke. And as the fire department showed up (the staff were very pissed when they found out it was a hoax) I walked down the street.

The bandages covering my face had to be a dead giveaway that I belonged in the hospital, but once I got past the mob no one tried to stop me. If any staff noticed me limping away, they didn't stop me, probably because they were scared of me.

Good. They should be. I could've started a _real _fire.

The next day, the wanted posters were already out, my face in every newspaper. I was a wanted fugitive. I think I liked it, at least at first.

_**~Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.**_

_~Euripides_

_..._

I took the bandages off myself. It was in the lady's room of some gas station, the lady next to me stared at me to make sure I was a lady, and to make sure I wasn't dying or about to mug her. I paid her no attention and only hoped she hadn't been watching the news lately.

Under the bandages was exactly what I was expecting.

More scars.

The lady, now washing her hands, still staring, gasped and offered to call an ambulance.

I denied the offer and examined my face. The left side of my face was simply more torn up even worse. The new burn overlapped the old one with dark red. It hadn't healed yet, and still should've been covered, but I didn't care enough to bother. I didn't want to touch it either, it was still swollen and scabby and it hurt like a bitch, but I washed it in the grimy gas station restroom, put on my ever useful gas mask, and left.

...

The next thing I did was go find my mother. It took me a week to get back to New York and find her. It was a week of hitch hiking and long walks, along with desperately avoiding the police. I think I had been hospitalized in Pennsylvania, a good distance away.

The problem was, I didn't know where my mother was staying, assuming she was still in New York. The only place in the whole damn city I could think to go, was home, which technically wasn't even in the city, it was on the edge and it was a pile of ash.

I remember standing in the clearing that once was my house, the yard a mess. I remember falling apart again and crying their four an hour. I also remember a car pulling up and my mother, wearing a sundress that she hadn't fit in for years, came out with a bouquet of flowers in her hand.

When our eyes met she dropped the flowers and yelled in Japanese. It took a while for her to calm down. She wiped at her eyes and I adjusted my mask.

"What are you doing back here?"

"I wanted to see you... This was the only place I could think to go to." I kicked at the charred wooden remains of my shed.

"They'll find you here."

"The police?"

"Yes! Of course! You so dense sometimes."

"Why do you care if the police find me?"

She took a long moment to answer. "Because you could get capital punishment, I don't want to know you, but I don't want you dead."

"I'm sorry."

"I told you you were going to prison." She said spitefully. "I told you, long ago."

I agreed that she had been right all along. She walked to me, took the stupid gas mask off my face and put her hand on my cheek. She eyed the new trauma. She looked me in the eye with a twisted and backwards expression, like she was trying to be disgusted but couldn't quite do it.

She always was a bad actor. She sighed. "Get in car."

I did.

She took me to her hotel room, closed all the blinds, and put a 'do not disturb' sign on the door. The first thing she did was shove ointment on my face as if I was still a little child that couldn't do it myself. She still had a motherly touch. She gave me a meal too, then forced me into the shower and gave me a new pair of clothes (a t-shirt, hoodie, panties and her only pair of jeans). They didn't quite fit, but I was thankful because the one I had been wearing stunk like rotten cheese. She washed the hospital clothes too.

Around midnight, after I napped for a long time, she woke me up and handed me a piece of paper with an address on it. "I'll be moving here. Don't visit. Don't mail. Don't call - lines will be tapped."

I nodded.

"Your father's car in parking lot, here's key. If police catch you, say you stole it."

I nodded and looked down to meet her eyes.

"You're a grown up now... Where has the time gone?" She cried and I even attempted to hug her. It didn't work, but the gesture might've been comforting. I shrugged.

I put the gas mask on again, pulled the hood over my head, and made way to the door with my extra change of clothes and a few other products my mother thought I needed. Before I left, I turned around and mumbled through the mask. "I didn't do it on purpose."

"It doesn't matter if you did it on purpose or not, you in trouble you can't get out of."

"Dad..."

"He died long before house fell. Smoke got him."

"I'm sorry." I put my hand on the doorknob.

"I don't care. Go now, don't get caught, don't be stupid - you are smart, could've gone to law school."

I scoffed. "That's a lie."

She smiled a sad smile. 「さあ、行きなさい」

「・・・さようなら、お母さん。」 I left, got into my dad's car which was much too nice for a person like me, and drove off.

_**~If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up.**_

_~Hunter S. Thompson_

Sometimes, when my emotions got real bad, or when I hadn't slept in a few days, I'd see my firefighter friend in the passenger seat of the car. Sometimes he looked like a corpse, sometimes not.

I'd turn on the radio to a station that always played one of the songs he'd liked to hum, and then ignored him- no, ignored _it. _I knew it was dangerous to acknowledge the hallucination, it wasn't healthy to call it a he, and it wasn't healthy to even have hallucinations in the first place.

"If you didn't use my trademark, you wouldn't be in this mess to begin with. If you didn't use it, they wouldn't have assumed you started the other twenty-three."

"I know." There goes my no talking to the hallucinations rule.

"You don't know I'm dead."

"If you were alive then you'd be starting fires and using the trademark too, I'd see you in the newspapers." I reasoned with – ultimately – myself.

"Yeah... s'pose so." It seemed sad and I'd ignore it and it'd go away.

...

Within a year, I was number seven on the America's top most wanted list. I kept myself relative in the news by continuing my hobby, and numbering each fire I started before I left them. I never stayed in one place. Always moving, always changing the license plate on the car (by stealing others) and always being smart.

Or, as smart as I could get. There were times I'd zone out and then suddenly a whole week was gone, what I did during those weeks I have no idea. I always had a new number to mark the next fire with afterwards though.

I have whole weeks missing from my memory, several of them. Sometimes I forgot to eat or sleep too, and sometimes I'd black out and realize I was suddenly in another state. Sometimes I'd black out and come to with blood covering my hands and a body in the back seat, wrapped in white sheets and smelly to the point it was unbearable to stay in the car.

Okay, the last one only happened once, but it is still noteworthy and it scared the hell out of me because I didn't know when, or why I did it. I don't even know who I killed.

I had dozens of close calls with the police, so I thought maybe it was a cop, but I now doubt that.

By two years, I had built myself a new flamethrower. It wasn't like my old one, it was more efficient, and had a fancy compression blast, albeit it didn't get used much. At this point I was using my third car, I wouldn't use one for too long or else someone might recognize it. By year two I was on the top ten most wanted list in Canada too, though I scarcely remember staying in Canada _at all._

Whenever I had these memory gaps, I'd be followed by hallucinations as well. I definitely broke the 'no talking to the hallucinations' rule. After one particularly big fire, I got in the car and started driving. After about a mile or two, a man in a red suit materialized out of fucking air in the passenger seat and I nearly crashed the car.

"Pardon, mon ami, I did not wish to startle you."

"Who the fuck are you!?"

"I suggest you keep driving, the fire department will show up momentarily." I did just that and repeated my previous question.

"I, chère fille, am simply inztructed to keep an... eye on you. Thought I'd introduce myself." I scoffed and then treated him like any other hallucination.

"I'll tell zhe employers you may not be... a good choice." I ignored him and eventually, when I looked over, he wasn't there anymore.

I was honestly _scared_ for my own sanity. My best friend was now a flamethrower, when I thought of my face I thought of a gas mask, my hallucinations supplied nearly all my conversation, and I couldn't remember anything.

I _needed_ help.

I couldn't get it

It scared me.

I dealt with this fear like I deal with every other emotion; with a match.

...

I was twenty when I made it to the state of Texas. Texas is hot. Texas has little rain, and is very dry. Texas burns great.

Ever heard of a little town called Dianne? It's nothing but dust now. It was a tiny place, it's police force consisted of two men and it's fire department was the next town over's fire department.

The Dianne incident is what finally scored me as the number one most wanted in America. It was also my one hundredth fire. And it is also what got me caught.

I was camping out in a field a few towns over, sleeping in the car. Suddenly someone was screaming for me to get out of the car and hold my hands up. I was caught. My freedom burned out like a matchstick. I got out of the car and had twenty guns pointed at my chest, and I knew it was over. I wasn't even that upset.

One hundred is a damn fine number.

"Look's like you caught me." I said more to myself that anyone else. I hoped they'd just shoot me so we could skip the whole 'justice system' drama. They did no such thing.

But still, one fucking hundred is nothing to shabby. My friend would be proud.

...

I was tried within four weeks. I was found guilty of 100 cases of arson and 83 cases of manslaughter, along with countless damage done to private and public property, disrupting the peace, and a thousand other things. I don't remember doing or committing most of these but I don't doubt I did every single thing they pinned on me.

83 deaths, and I only remember three of them. That Greasy Man, my father, and my friend. 83. It felt like someone shot me with 83 bullets. And then it felt like nothing.

The court lasted two days, it seemed like twenty minutes.

I hadn't even tried to use the insanity plea, because capital punishment sounded better than life in an insane asylum. I was placed on the death row, and I was the only woman on death row. I did not see my mother, or any other visitors. For awhile, I did not even feel. Not a thing, it was a comfortable numb.

I turned twenty one while on death row, and I didn't notice. I didn't notice how the hallucinations came more often, or how they got weirder and weirder to the point that they might've come out of children's cartoons. I hated it. All of it. The things I hated most were the food, the color of the walls (grey) and the colors of our clothes (orange), and of course the absence of my mask and flamethrower. Sometimes a few of the asshole guards thought they could get some easy sex from me, and damn they are pushy. If you're a guard, you can get away with anything, and they knew it, but I wasn't a scared fifteen year old then, and I was able to handle myself a little better.

I still hope they burn in hell.

Several times I tried making a noose out of my bed sheets, I tried choking on my food, I tried to drown myself in the shower rooms, but nothing worked, I couldn't end it. I had to wait for our justice system to do it for me.

I would've been desperate enough to kill myself with a spoon if I didn't get that life saving visit.

Her name was Miss Pauling. She was young, and pretty, dressed in purple (which looked like a beautiful change from orange) and wearing thick rimmed glasses. She looked at me like a person, and upon first laying eyes on her I decided I liked her.

"Hello-" (my name) "-I'm here to offer you a job." I couldn't fucking believe it. "And this job would... save you from your current predicament."

"How?" I asked from the other side of the glass.

"Leave that to me, all you have to know is that RED has a large sum of power and money. And Saxton Hale." I just stared at her.

"All you would have to do it set stuff on fire, and we'll help you escape and give a whole new identity so you can get on the right of the law."

"How?"

"Just say yes, we'll get you out of here to sign a contract and you'd work for RED, fighting BLU."

I hated to sound like a broken record, but I had to ask again "HOW?"

"Don't worry about that, I'm offering to pay you to play with fire." She smiled sweetly, intoxicatingly, and I found myself saying "hell yeah."

...

And suddenly my schedule changed, within three days I was to be sent to another prison.

I was cuffed and put into a van and it drove away and I never arrived at that 'other prison.' The back door of the van opened and Miss Pauling held out her hand to me out. "Welcome to RED Pyro."

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**Thanks for reading, hope you liked it. Next chapter will be up at some point next week. For anyone who is wondering, the Japanese dialog towards the middle of the story is simply the mother and daughter saying goodbye. Did anyone like the sniper and spy guest appearances? Yes, no?**

** Either way, have a fantastic day.  
**


	7. Chapter 7

**Once again, thank you all greatly for the support, soooo sorry this chapter is so late. School happened. The end of the year is tough. This chapter is a bit shorter than the last two mega chapters but it seems like a decent length to me. **

**Warning: Shius my proof reader didn't see this chapter, expect some errors. If you see anything horribly wrong, tell me.**

* * *

_**~In this bright future you can't forget your past.**_

~_Bob Marley_

Ms. Pauling handed me my a pen and slid the contract to me. She sat across from me on the other side of the table, eyeing me as if I'd deny the offer. We were in RED headquarters, which was my last stop before Tuefort. We had spent the last hour discussing my contract, discussing the exact details, how much room I had to breathe, my pay, all that stuff. We had finally reached an agreement.

My contracted lasted for five years, at the end of the five years I could choose to renew it or be released. Or, they could release me before that if I became a nuisance to RED. I worked for little more than minimum wage, (with a hefty Christmas check each year if I did good) and I worked for up to six months at a time.

The part that made the job worthwhile was the fact that when, or if, RED decided I was an important asset, which could take anywhere from a month to two years, I would be given a new identity. An identity free of charges, free of problems with the law, a fresh start. I could be a new person.

I could be a better person.

Ms. Pauling would release documents saying I was put to death in the electric chair, and anyone who could say otherwise was sent a fat check to keep their fucking mouth shut. She said that I was a big enough name that the news of my death might hit the press and media. The world would think I was_ dead. _

Even my mother, who ended up god-fucking-knows where, would think I was dead.

And I would be a nobody until RED gave me some 'official' documents that said otherwise. After I received my identity, I could ask for a raise, or asked to be released from duty early.

My contract stated that everything is very hush-hush as well. NO blabbing to anyone who wasn't a comrade, and even then I should be cautious about what comes out my mouth.

By signing the document I agreed to all of that. I looked to Ms. Pauling, who expression remained neutral.

"You'll take care of everything?"

"Everything, and then some. RED will even set you up with a doctor to look into your mental health, covered by your new health insurance."

I hated doctors. I cringed at that but I nodded anyway, knowing I could use help. I signed the contract and agreed to fight in some everlasting personal war between two monopoly companies over worthless land in the middle of Arizona.

...

"So you know the other eight on the teams? The other classes?" Ms. Pauling asked as we waited for a train to come and pick me up. Several bags sat at our feet, including one holding my flamethrower, the one the police confiscated once they found me. RED had dug it up somehow. In another bag, sat my new uniform. I hadn't had a chance to look at it yet.

"Yes Miss Pauling." I told her like I would tell my mother.

"And you've been debriefed on the objectives you'll be expected to complete?"

I nodded and adjusted my mask

"You know of respawn?"

"Roughly."

"Pyro" -that's my new name- "You are aware that the missions can last for months and that brakes might be few and far between," she continued before I could nod. "And, you know you'll be the only woman on the team. It's up to you how you introduce yourselves to the team, but some of the men might be a little..." I filled in the blanks.

"Okay. I'll manage." Ms. Pauling handed me my stuff, and within minutes I said goodbye and boarded the first train to come to the station. I waved back to Ms. Pauling, who I quickly branded branded as a friend though I doubt she did the same for me, and she probably waved back. I didn't look to check.

I was probably the only person on the train besides the conductor, who I didn't see at any point. Instead of passengers, the train carried cargo for the other RED mercenaries. It was six full cars of food, ammo, basic necessities, weapons, and various crates. The crates had the class names on them, all eight of the other classes, and something told me that they were personal. I didn't touch them.

For the first hour and a half of the ride I fiddled with a lighter and tried to calm my emotions. I was nervous. I was excited. And I was happy. It had been a long time sense I was happy. I didn't know what to do with myself, or if I should feel guilty about feeling happy about getting a job where _I kill people_.

The lighter in my fingers flickered on and off a few more times before I decided it wasn't helping and put it away. A few minutes later I got bored and took it out again.

The lighter in my hand I had found in my father car a few years ago when my mother gave it to me. It was a zippo of course, with my fathers name long since rubbed off. I suppose it was the only thing I had left of him, and even though with every year the where and tear get greater and the value drops, it still managed to be my favorite.

I wondered briefly if what became of my mother. If she remarried. If she possibly had another child or two. If she is still even alive. I laughed after that last one, you couldn't kill that woman with an ax.

I wondered if she was happy. If she ever thought of me. I flipped the lighter closed and put it in one of my bags.

In one of the bags sitting at my feet, was my new uniform. It was red and made of a thick rubber, it was surprisingly heavy for it's size, and the important part was it was fire-retardant. It came with boots and gloves, and a new gas mask. I put on the uniform, leaving the mask off and decided I liked it.

I liked the way it was baggy. It was possibly made for a person a few sizes bigger than myself. I liked the way it didn't show off any 'womanly curves' I may or may not have had, and I liked the way it covered all of my skin (with the mask) and hid all of my scarring, not like I was ashamed of it, but because a few of the other mercenaries might want to know how I got them and I don't particularly like discussing it.

The uniform came with a new mask as well, and upgrade from my old one. It covered my whole head, unlike my other one which was held by straps and only really covered my face. The eye holes were bigger and the filters wider, which would be more convenient for me. I was reluctant to change from my old mask, it held some sentimental value, but I put on the new one and stuffed the old one in my bag so I wouldn't lose it.

The train screeched like a bat out of hell and rolled to a shuddering stop. I grabbed my bags and opened the door with my foot because my hands were full. A blast of heat hit me, like stepping into a sauna.

I looked around.

Everything was desert. Miles upon miles of sand and tumbleweeds under a steel colored sky. The only other thing besides the endless landscape and the train, was a man and an old ford pick up truck.

"Welcome to Tuefort."

_**~Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.**_

_~Henry Ford_

"Go ahead and put that right in th' truck," the man stated as he tipped his cowboy hat to me and motioned to the bags in my hands. "The train won't be stayin' long, we need ta get all of our supplies outta there before it leaves." He adjusted a pair of goggles, and got to work. I noticed the handgun strapped to his belt and wondered why he had it. There would be no one to fight out here.

I stood uselessly for a moment before putting my stuff in the back of the truck and helping him unload the stuff from the train. Most of the boxes were horribly heavy and a few we needed to both carry, but after a few minutes we packed everything that would fit into the back of the pick up and closed the tailgate. Not a minute later did the train start back up and slowly move away, picking up speed every ten yards and disappearing down the tracks.

"The tracks don't reach our base, so every week Heavy or Demo an' me drive out here to pick up the supplies." The man started to get into the drivers seat of the truck before stopping and walking back over to me, staring in the lenses of my new mask. Then he took off the goggles and extended his hand. "Well pardon me, don't believe I introduced myself. I'm the engineer, Engie for short. It's pleasure to meet ya, you can call me Dell if ya really like, but most of the boys jus' go by their class name."

I shook his hand and said I was the pyro, but it came out a jumbled mess of syllables. He smiled to himself and got in the car. I got in the passenger seat. The engineer told me a bit about the war we were in and drove away from the train tracks into nothing, and I started to get worried. Engie was a good conversationalist and his words (though I can't remember what he was saying) were distracting, but not distracting enough to make me forget about the gun at his waist.

Was he driving me out into the middle of nowhere to shoot me?

No. I was being paranoid. I was good at that. I would've taken out a lighter to take my mind of it, but they were all in my bags in the truck bed, and I'm sure Engineer would've thought that really weird anyway.

Not a minute later a little dot showed up on the horizon and I stopped fretting about it. "That's our base." As the dot grew bigger the more anxious I became. We arrived. Engineer parked the truck behind the base and helped me with my bags, he said the rest of the stuff could stay there for a while until the other guys felt like getting it.

You can understand my horror when I realized the base was a giant _wooden_ structure. While walking through the pretty narrow halls, on the dry hay lining the floor, I realized just how difficult it would be not to catch the base on fire. They expected me to run through these narrow halls wielding a flamethrower, while this was one of the easiest places to burn I'd seen in a while.

"Right this way buddy, th' others are jus' upstairs." I followed Engineer through a courtyard and up some rickety stairs, then down some halls. The whole base wasn't wooden, the inside contained white brick in places, but overall the whole thing would be a nuisance.

Note to self, don't set the base on fire.

We reached a section that must've been the living quarters and Engineer yelled for the others.

And suddenly there was a man in a helmet yelling in my face, a kid to my left talking faster than light speed, and what only could've easily been a giant standing in front of me with a judgmental look hanging on boredom.

I can't tell you exactly what any of them said, but the one who yelled like a banshee was going on about my association with nazis and the other was getting into some rather personal questions. The giant scratched his chin.

The man in the goggles spoke up. "This is our new pyro boys, 'bout time we got one too. Pyro, this here's Heavy Weapons Guy-"

"-Heavy."

"Scout and Soldier." I could guess who was who. I said hello but I suppose it didn't sound like hello.

"Could you repeat that son?" I shrugged.

"You are leetle man. Where is weapon, leetle man?" I would've answered but another stormed in the room, demanding to know 'vat all the rucuz waz about,' then another holding a bottle of booze with eyepatch, and the room was filled with more people.

And it was chaotic. Jesus Fuck do these guys know how to bicker and argue and be _loud._

Engineer: That's medic over there, he won't bug you if you don't bug him-

Scout: I'm Scout-

Medic: -He knows zat Scout, zis is Demo.

Demo: Nice ta meet ya lad, 'bout time ye showed up, we been needen a pyro for a 'ong time now.

Soldier: Are you a full blooded american? I won't trust a COMMIE BASTARD to cover me on MY team-

Someone: SOLDIER!

Scout: I wanna talk!

Demo: An' no one wants ta 'ear it.

_Too many people. _

Heavy: Leetle fireman must show weapon.

Soldier: If you ignore me one more time, you'll get 20 extra laps to run tomorrow Private!

Engineer: We don't actually run laps-

Scout: I do-

Demo: Only cause yoo need ta practice running away! _His breath smelled of booze._

Scout: Buddy, I'm a f-

Engineer: Yes, we know Scout.

_A few seconds of silence and it was like a godsend, but then gone again._

Medic: Herr Pyro, I have your file, it iz mostly blank, you must come with me tomorrow and ve'll fix zat.

Heavy: You _vill _go with doctor.

Engineer: Boy, why don't you come with me and we'll get you situated...

My heart pounded in my ears. I tensed. At least they were starting to pick up on this before it was too late. I didn't like crowded places and I didn't really care for much talking and I certainly didn't like everyone talking at once, not necessarily even at me. Soldier started yelling again, and captured most of my attention.

Then a man in pinstripes and a ski mask came in the room, followed by a unenthusiastic tall fellow with sun glasses.

I looked right past the tall fucker to the other. I remembered this man in pinstripes, and it was clear by the pompous look in his eyes he remembered me. He stared at me smugly, and I stared at him. The room fell silent with the tension.

"..."

"Nice to meet you, mon ami." Smug Bastard.

"You're real." I stated. _"You're fucking real." _I thought myself _completely _insane because of this guy, and it turns out he was real, not a freaking hallucination.

"Could you repeat zat?"

Dammit.

"You were in my car, you were the- You're real, I, I thought you were a hallucination, god damn you're real."

"You're going to have to speak up son." Soldier said. I groaned, but it is probably for the best they couldn't hear me.

The pinstriped man smiled dismissed himself and walked away, stating he had something to do. Engineer informed me that that was Spy, and he gets on everybody's nerve at some point.

...

I was introduced to the sniper, who seems a bit like a cranky introvert, but who am I to judge? We didn't say anything to each other, then I was checked into respawn, and I moved into my room. Engie showed it to me. At least we all had our own room, if I had to share with anybody I would kill them.

"Now I know everything must be a bit hectic now, the team are an odd bunch an' all, but don't worry you'll fit in soon, Scouts new too, he's only been here a week. How 'bout you come eat dinner with us?"

Dinner didn't sound like something I intended to attend, but I was hungry. I followed Engineer to the kitchen and fixed a plate of re-heated stew.

"Ya gonna eat with us brotha?"

I shook my head and mumbled an excuse.

"No one can hear a damn thing ya mutter through that freaking mask, why don't ya just take it off man?"

"I don't want to." He understood that part at least.

A couple of the guys, Engineer and Soldier I think, said they'd find me a couple of other weapons in the morning. I was told by the German man I'd get a check up (which I fully intended to skip) tomorrow, and I dismissed myself to my room and contemplated eating the re-heated stew. I locked the door, double checking it twice to insure that the only other ones who would be getting in the room were my own mental head trips.

And real ones, not that god damn Spy, pretending to be a hallucination.

I let out a sigh of relief I didn't know I was holding. _Fuck all of this shit. _

It was too many people to meet at once and I struggled to tie all the faces to the names.

I took of the suit, and the gas mask, which I was liking a great deal. It hid everything. I unpacked my bags, throwing what little possessions I had all about in an attempt to make the room less foreign. It was certainly nicer than a jail cell, but the blank wooden walls and floors didn't make it seem like anything that would belong to me, whereas the jail cell had felt _almost _homey when I left it.

I hadn't felt really at home sense I left the nest at eighteen, but at one point the cell felt close.

Air seeped through the one window (which was cracked and had a nice view of endless desert) in the room, and even though it was closed, the room was hot. There was nothing I could do to stop the hot air from entering the room. I accepted it. My room was just another sauna.

And, don't fucking forget, I had eight strangers, half of whom might be complete wack jobs, sleeping in the same building right down the hall. It unnerved me.

I collapsed into the bed and covered myself with the thin scratchy sheets, and ignored the thoughts that reminded me that I possessed a flamethrower again, (though I'd have to assemble it) and I was in the middle of a dry desert with no one around to catch me for miles, in a flammable wooden base that wouldn't even need any promoting except a match to catch.

Such thoughts weren't healthy, I told myself. They were straight up homicidal. They weren't right, but that didn't stop me from thinking such thoughts.

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**Hope you enjoyed this chapter though it isn't all that exciting. **

**A special thanks to everyone of you _fabulous_ people for reading, please tell me your opinion and have a fantastic day. **


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